


Resolution

by Chiomi



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mystery, Time Loop, hello and welcome to symbolism hell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-25 21:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9845903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: Something goes terribly wrong - wrong enough to drive Chat to do the unthinkable. How many tries will it take to make things right?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I can promise nothing in terms of updates, as I have an auction fic and an exchange fic to finish as well as too many other WIPs. But here's the prologue. It's gonna be fun, I promise. Thanks to Deusbex for bouncing ideas back and forth.

It’s raining hard. The drops are indistinguishable from saltier water on Chat’s face as he stands on the balcony. Chloe wraps her sweater closer around herself to shelter from the cold air swirling in the door. Chat doesn’t look like he notices the temperature.

“What do you want?” Chloe asks.

Chat holds out a box, dropping it so Chloe has no choice but to catch it. “I need your help,” he says raggedly. “Fu says - “ he breaks off with a snarl. “It doesn’t matter what Fu says. But you’re the only one I can trust, so here. Open it.”

Chloe opens the box, revealing a bracelet made of a silver snake swallowing its own tail. Her eyes widen. “But we don’t even like each other!”

Chat shakes his head. “Look, I don’t have time, and he’ll - I’m Adrien, Chloe. I need you to transform, fast. I don’t know how long your powers will be effective, but we need - ha - we need a miracle.” He tells her why.

Chloe stares at him a moment, until the cold air makes her shiver. She shoves the bracelet over her wrist, letting the box fall to the ground. “If you’re fucking with me, I’ll kill you.”

A silver and blue creature tumbles out, hissing. “Wha -?”

“Scales on,” Chloe says, her eyes on Chat. It takes a certain kind of imperiousness or a certain kind of panic to ignore a deity popping into existence, but Chloe has both in spades. Light rises around her, but she keeps her eyes on Chat as her clothes disappear, displaced by a silver bodysuit. She doesn’t know what her powers are, but she assumes Chat does, since this is what he brought her. The grandfather clock in her sitting room starts chiming midnight, and her eyes widen: midnight feels like a very final cutoff. There’s a hoop attached to her belt, the same unremitting silver as her bodysuit. She looks at it. It makes sense, sort of: both a yoyo and a baton are toys as well as weapons. There’s a faint pattern on the hoop, again of a snake eating its own tail, and Chloe knows the legends Adrien’s mom used to read to both of them.

She flings out the hoop with the flick of wrist she knows will send it spinning back towards her on its own and calls out, “Ouroboros.”

The whole world is enveloped in what she is already thinking of as snake-silver light, and the clock stops chiming midnight.

When the light fades, Chat Noir is gone, and one of the blue scales on the back of the snakeshead on her wrist is beeping to silver.


	2. In which Chloe is unmoved

Chloe wakes to rain and a soft tap to her face. Sitting straight up, she screams as loud as she possibly can before she’s even awake enough to identify what touched her.

A creature flutters around in distress. Making it out more clearly doesn’t make Chloe want to stop screaming: it’s like some giant fuzzy bug right next to her  _ bed _ .

“Oh dear, oh no - you have to stop, please,” it says.

Chloe doesn’t stop voluntarily, but she’s out of air, and gasps deeply. The creature continues to flutter, nearly tying its long body in knots in its distress. “You can’t let anyone know I’m here,” it says.

“Get away from me,” Chloe says.

It does a figure eight in the air and then retreats to the edge of the bed. “Do you remember last night?”

“Yes, and you weren’t here,” she says, volume escalating again. She pushes back her hair, then checks herself: there’s an unfamiliar weight on her wrist. Somehow she’s acquired a silver bangle that clashes with absolutely everything she owns. At least the blue worked into it will look good with her eyes. “What are you?”

It sighs. “I am Naaga, the kwami of the Serpent Miraculous.”

Chloe’s head snaps up so fast her neck cracks. “Like Ladybug?”

“Yes, except she was actually supposed to have her Miraculous. You and I - we’re not a good fit. If we were, you’d remember last night.”

Naaga sounds tired, and Chloe narrows her eyes at it, vaguely insulted. “What’s wrong with you that we don’t fit?”

Naaga lifts one tiny hand and puts it over its face. “This right here is the problem, you impossible child.”

Chloe sniffs, and tosses her hair. With her hair down instead of in its usual ponytail, it just tumbles loosely over her shoulders, not making any kind of useful statement at all. “Whatever. Why are you here?”

“Apparently,” Naaga says with heavy sarcasm, “someone thought things were dire enough to need to go back in time. Of course, they didn’t find someone I could work with well enough that they’d remember right off, and your black cat didn’t explain anything to me last night. So I have no idea. But something bad’s going to happen today, and we have until midnight to fix it.”

Chloe runs her fingers through her hair. She’s not awake yet - definitely not awake enough for people to  _ expect _ things of her. “I’m getting a shower.”

Naaga is still there when she gets out of the shower, which sucks. Chloe had kind of hoped that it had been a dream. Snakes aren’t lucky like ladybugs, they’re just gross, and ‘figure out something no one remembers’ is not the kind of heroism people blog about. She frowns, then starts to get ready for school.

“What are you doing,” Naaga says, aghast, as she gets together her school bag.

Chloe makes sure her lip gloss is secure in the pen slot in her bag. “Getting ready to go to school?”

“But there are important things happening!”

Chloe rolls her eyes. “They didn’t happen until  _ after _ school, and Daddy expects me to have perfect attendance. It’s not like whatever emergency even exists yet, so I’m not going to let it inconvenience me.”

“Of course,” Naaga says. “Right. Probably momentous events are just an inconvenience to you. Why on Earth did the black cat bring me to you?”

-

As it happens, they don’t find out: absent the recourse of the Serpent Miraculous, Chat Noir never comes to Chloe’s balcony, and so she wakes again with no more information than she’d started with. It’s the same day, and Chloe wakes to a kwami she can’t remember. A kwami and the rain.


	3. In which livestreaming is dangerous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said there wasn't a schedule, and there still isn't, because grad school.

Marinette wakes to rain, even though the forecast had called for clear skies. The patter of it on the roof is disorienting, like it’s driven out some dream she really should remember. But she doesn’t have time to contemplate that - she has to get ready for school.

Later, there’s an akuma - they’ve been coming frequently these days. The relentless stream of them is kind of exhausting. They defeat the akuma, though, as usual.

Afterwards, Marinette lands more loudly on the top of the dumpster than she’d like. She only has seconds left on her transformation, so there isn’t time for anything more graceful. She hops down into the alley just as light envelops her, just as she hears Alya’s distinctive cry of, “Ladybug!”

The light clears, her whole world dissolving with it. Alya’s staring at her, phone still raised. She looks frozen, eyes wide. Suddenly she gasps, and pales, and frantically taps her phone screen. She looks back up, her face ashen. “I was streaming,” she whispers.

Marinette feels the whisper like a blow. She staggers, catching the edge of the dumpster to steady herself. “How many?”

Alya swallows hard and looks down at her phone again. Marinette knows she doesn’t need to check. Marinette knows the answer, but Alya still says, “Thousands.”

The air is too thin and she can’t get enough of it. “Is there - is there any chance they won’t figure out who I am?”

“You’re _ Ladybug _ ,” she says, like it’s a complete explanation in and of itself. In some ways it is. “God, how could I not have seen - but no. Okay. Shit. Crisis now, fangirl later.” Alya shoves her phone into her pocket and both hands into her hair, starting to pace back and forth at the mouth of the alley. “What are your privacy settings like?”

Marinette laughs wildly. She’s won a few design competitions, so she has social media that she’s tried to make it easy for people to find. Her instagram has more pictures of her designs than her face, but it’s still public. But she’s  _ no one _ . Or she wasn’t, before five minutes ago.

“Marinette?” Tikki sounds hesitant and exhausted.

“Sorry, Tikki,” Marinette says, and pulls cookies out of her purse. The actions are mechanical. She’s gone through this routine after a transformation hundreds of times now. She’s taken care of Tikki exhausted and nursing phantom bruises, but this may be the worst.

“What’s - okay, no, we have to get out of the alley. Now that the akuma’s gone people might come over.”

A text notification chimes on Marinette’s phone. She can feel the firmament of her life crumbling with the vibrations of it.

“We need to get you inside.” Alya grabs her hand, and tows her the few blocks to her parents bakery. Alya’s apartment had been closer, but she understands when Alya shoves her towards the stairs and says grimly, “I’ll warn your parents.”

Marinette stumbles up to her room, still faintly numb. Tikki flies free of her purse and does an agitated loop of the room. “This is terrible, Marinette!”

“Yeah,” Marinette says, staring at her phone. It keeps buzzing with incoming notifications, fast enough that she doesn’t have time to read them even in passing. She’s mostly looking for names - will Chloe pretend to like her now? Will Adrien think she’s cool? If he does, suddenly and abruptly, that might be the worst thing of all. There’s a whole string of texts from Nino that are just emoji, and still incomprehensible even though she can parse the whole of them before they’re pushed offscreen.

Her phone starts ringing, displaying a number she hasn’t seen before, and Marinette shoves it away from her on her desk like it’s something that might bite.

“Do you want to call Chat Noir?”

Marinette shakes her head, not looking up. She hasn’t even been thinking of him, but this is so much worse. If she was going to reveal her identity to anyone on purpose, it would have been him. But he probably hasn’t even seen it yet! He’s going to find out after thousands and thousands of other people. She can’t imagine he won’t be hurt by that. Everything has gone all horrible. She wishes she could go back in time and - and land somewhere else, or stay on a roof and hide behind a chimney. As it is, her phone keeps interrupting any attempts to think her way out of this. She reaches over and holds down the power button until it turns off, giving her some semblance of peace. A shudder runs through her in the subsequent silence. She’d already been braced so hard against incoming messages that the tension leaves her in waves.

Alya comes up the stairs and sits on the chaise without saying anything. When Marinette tilts her head, she can see Alya’s on her phone, glaring intently. She then sighs deeply and tucks her phone away. “My followers have figured it out. There’s a press van outside.”

A high keening noise escapes Marinette’s throat. “I didn’t ever think -”

“I know,” Alya says. “I’m so sorry.”

Marinette shakes her head. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault, except maybe mine for not being more careful.”

“Marinette,” Tikki says, concern and compassion and reproach all in that one word. “You couldn’t predict this.”

Marinette shakes her head again, harder. “You got akumatized over wondering who I am, Alya. And you’re the most dedicated journalist who covers us. I should have - I should have talked to you.”

Alya pauses. “I mean, like, I’m not gonna pretend I wouldn’t have loved that, but you’ve been pretty clear about wanting to protect people by hiding your identity, and I’d mostly come to terms with that. And I’d never have - that’s not how I’d have done it.” She groans and shoves her hands into her hair. “You’re going to be immortalized with a dumpster in the background! That’s the worst!” Her hair is in dramatic disarray.

Marinette tips her head back against the back of her chair and laughs. Her laughter turns to tears fairly quickly, and Alya comes to hug her. Marinette almost doesn’t hug her back, because - well, because. But she does, because Alya is still her best friend.

When Alya straightens, she looks at her own phone like she can’t help it.

The things that must be popping up on it terrify Marinette. She draws her knees up and hugs them tight, wanting to make herself so small she disappears. “How bad is it?”

“You look pretty,” Alya offers helplessly. “That’s something, right?”

“Where?” Tikki asks, a little sharply.

Marinette almost doesn’t want to know. Actually, no, Marinette definitely doesn’t want to know.

Alya says it anyway. “Everywhere.”

She knew, of course. She’s done press conferences. She would probably even recognize the faces of most of the people now exposing her to all of Paris - no, all of France, probably. “I should talk to my parents, shouldn’t I?”

“Uh,” says Alya. “Yeah. Your mom said they’d close up. I don’t think they’ll have let the journalists distract them too much - your mom was looking kind of scary.”

Marinette quails slightly. This isn’t going to be a pleasant talk.

-

It’s not. Her parents are worried, and proud, and worried, and disappointed at her deceit, and - it all keeps coming back to worried. The noise of the news vans outside punctuates the conversation. They decrease as the day wears on, other stories presumably requiring coverage as well. None of them turn on the TV to check. Alya eventually leaves, because school is still in session: the world has only ended for Marinette, not the rest of Paris.

Their doorbell rings enough times that it feels like they’re under siege. Eventually, her father goes down and reopens the bakery, selling out in record time despite a blanket refusal to comment. It at least keeps the doorbell from ringing quite so much.

Sabine wraps her in a blanket and lets her freak out on the couch. Marinette knows she can’t stay here forever, stay huddled in her blanket, but she doesn’t know what she’ll do when she stops. She needs to talk to Chat, to arrange a press conference, to figure out a way to go to school. She needs to face her phone. She needs to - how many people will be akumatized over the revelation? Too disappointed and angry to stay themselves? She needs to stay on top of this, get in front of this, but she can’t seem to move.

What will happen now that Hawk Moth knows who she is? She doesn’t know how to defend against that. If it were anyone else, if she were anyone else, she’d say they should call the police for protection. But Marinette knows completely and absolutely that she’s the best defense against what Hawk Moth can throw at them. They’ll just . . . all be coming to her home, now. Maybe Chat can help.

Marinette huddles under a blanket that she needs for emotional rather than physical comfort, and panic and possibility tumblr together in her brain. Tikki leans on her in silent comfort, but 5000 years as Ladybug hadn’t prepared her for the dangers of livestreaming.

The day wanes.

Nothing fixes itself.

Eventually, Marinette has to leave her little cocoon of denial to eat dinner with her parents. She takes one of the croque monsieur that was all her father had felt up to making, then puts it down on her plate. “I’m going to have to do a press conference. I think it’s the only way to make them stop camping outside.”

Sabine exchanges a glance with Tom. “Well, honey, you do have experience with holding them. Do you think you’ll do it today?”

Marinette - she knows her duty. She knows who she is, who she has to be, what’s expected of her as Ladybug. Still, she quails. “Tomorrow? Tonight, can we just watch movies?”

“Of course, kiddo,” her father says, ruffling her hair. “Finish your dinner and then we can watch all your favorites.”

She does, and they do. Marinette leaves her phone untouched and curls up with her mother and her father and Tikki, with the whole of her family, and tries to lose herself in familiar stories with happy endings.

At midnight, a noise like something skittering on pavement makes its way across the city, spreading farther than the volume justifies.


End file.
